General Introduction

The Encyclopedia of Marxism aims to be the most complete reference guide to Marxism. We present these words uniquely with a Marxist analysis & critique, and we try to lay bare these words so there can be a shared understanding, a lucidity that exposes our diverse roots of thought and history, and explainations that are readily comprehensible. We do this work in the earnest quest that by presenting this information, putting it clearly out in the open, we will encourage you, the reader, to help us out, to expand our own horizons, our limited knowledge and experience. We are truly an open Encyclopedia. We want you to send your contributions. Whether you have positive criticism of a current word we have, or if you would like to add something we don't have, please write to us.

Our aim has been to present how a word has been used by Marxists, and to reflect the range of views found amongst Marxists of various hues, especially the views of the founders of Marxist theory. Where relevant, we sometimes show how Marxists differ in their use of a word from non-Marxists.

A note about attributions. Generally, whenever you see an article that is not attributed to an author, it was written by Brian Baggins and/or Andy Blunden. The exception to this rule is that when we first created the Encyclopedia, Sally Ryan helped add a large number of biblographic entries. Since around 2002 we started to regularly attribute an article to the person who contributed it, excepting those written by the Editors at the time (otherwise 90% of the encyclopedia would be attributed to the board, which is somewhat redundent).